In the Castle of My Skin

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'They won't know you, the you that's hidden somewhere in the castle of your skin' 
 
Nine-year-old G. leads a life of quiet mischief crab catching, teasing preachers and playing among the pumpkin vines. His sleepy fishing village in 1930s Barbados is overseen by the English landlord who lives on the hill, just as their 'Little England' is watched over by the Mother Country. Yet gradually, G. finds himself awakening to the violence and injustice that lurk beneath the apparent order of things. As the world he knows begins to crumble, revealing the bruising secret at its heart, he is spurred ever closer to a life-changing decision. Lyrical and unsettling, George Lamming's autobiographical coming-of-age novel is a story of tragic innocence amid the collapse of colonial rule. 
 
'Rich and riotous' The Times 
 
'Its poetic imaginative writing has never been surpassed' Tribune

Its poetic imaginative writing has never been surpassed

George Lamming was a Barbados-born novelist, essayist, and poet. He taught at universities around the world, including posts of Distinguished Visiting Professor at Duke University and Visiting Professor at Brown University. His books include In the Castle of My Skin (1953), The Emigrants (1954), Of Age and Innocence (1958), and The Pleasures of Exile (1960).

In a sleepy fishing village in 1930s Barbados, nine-year-old G. leads a life of quiet mischief. While the village lies tranquil in the shadow of its English landlord, Mr Creighton, and his towering house on the hill, G. makes his own fun, crab catching, teasing preachers, and playing among the pumpkin vines. Yet from this world of boyish pursuits, the precocious G. finds himself slowly awakening to strange goings-on in adult society. All around him, sudden bursts of violence - a devastating flood on the morning of his birthday; the headmaster unduly flogging his schoolmates on Empire day - hint at a brutality and destruction lurking beneath the apparently peaceful order of things. 
 
As the mounting wrongs of the present drive the villagers to rise up against Mr Creighton, the fissures in the façade of his Barbadian 'little England' begin to crack open, laying bare the central, bruising secret at the heart of their shared past. And as the world he knows crumbles before his eyes, G. is spurred ever closer to a life-changing decision. Poetic, unsettling, this classic coming-of-age novel is a story of tragic innocence, as a poor village boy comes to consciousness amid the collapse of colonial rule in mid-century Barbados.

George Lamming

One of the great political novels in modern ‘colonial’ literature

Natives of My Person' is undoubtedly George Lamming's finest novel. It succeeds in illuminating new areas of darkness in the colonial past that the colonizer has so far not dealt with, and in this sense it is a profoundly revolutionary and original work... George Lamming is not so much a novelist as a chronicler of secret journeys to the innermost regions of the West Indian psyche

A powerful reimagining of the age of European exploration, Natives of My Person tells the story of a nameless Commandant who sets sail under imperial orders – somewhere between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries – to locate the fabled island of San Cristobal, a place shrouded in myth and promise. But this is no ordinary voyage. As the expedition unfolds, it becomes a mirror of the imperial mind – ambitious, fractured, haunted by its own contradictions. 
 
With poetic intensity and philosophical depth, this is a novel that journeys far beyond the seas it charts. Through shifting perspectives and a richly layered narrative, Lamming unearths the deep scars of conquest and the personal and political dimensions of empire – its delusions, its violence, and the haunting legacy it leaves behind.

Natives of My Person

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One of the great political novels in modern ‘colonial’ literature

Natives of My Person' is undoubtedly George Lamming's finest novel. It succeeds in illuminating new areas of darkness in the colonial past that the colonizer has so far not dealt with, and in this sense it is a prof ...

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